Half-price Quantum HDDs not for sale here

CDW dishonours 'offer'

US e-tailer CDW has become the latest in a string of dotcoms to cock-up its online pricing.

But the company says it will not honour the price, which offered Quantum hard drives at around half of what they should have cost.

The drives in question, 9.2GB Quantum Atlas 10K II, normally cost around $350, and CDW currently has them on its site for $275.

But a glitch in July put the components on sale at $119.83. The company sent out confirmation emails, saying the hard drives were on back order from Quantum. It then realised its mistake and decided not to honour the price.

Mark Nelson, who ordered four of the hard drives, told The Reg: "I felt a little burned by CDW, but at the same time I did not want to feel that I was stealing from anyone. After some soul searching, I decided to drop the matter."

But Nelson says he won't deal with CDW again: "While I don't feel they were dishonest - I also don't feel that customer satisfaction is number one. I realize that companies need to make a profit - however when they make a mistake, I think they should own up to it and make things right."

Sounds fair enough. Illinois-based CDW, for its part, put the price glitch down to "human input error". It plans to contact any customers affected, but says it won't honour the price advertised in July.

"We do operate our business ethically. But that doesn't mean we're infallible," said a CDW representative. "When you have technology and the human touch, mistakes happen."

Last week Dell decided to honour a cheap PC blunder on its Website in a bid to stop peeved punters straying to rivals. ®